Mr. Gerry Gannon:

I have some information which might be useful for illustration purposes and to explain the bottom line and how we get to it. The total number of contractors’ fleet that we had at the start of 2009 was 3,381 vehicles. The additional services sanctioned by the Department of Education and Skills up to September 2009 amounted to 89 vehicles. That is a potential new vehicle requirement of 3,470 vehicles for the start of the school year. One must bear in mind the re-organisation of services and the efficiencies. This is where we talk about network planning expertise being essential. It has been identified in a number of previous independent examinations, including the value for money report, how essential it is. The value of it is that the 3,470 potential new vehicle requirement was reduced because we were able to take 148 vehicles out of the service through using our transport planning expertise. In autumn when the school year started we needed 3,322 contractors’ vehicles. In other words, despite 89 new services being needed we achieved it by reducing the total number of vehicles by 59.